Chain migration keeps families intact and creates many productive Americans in succeeding generations. It is a good thing.

In 1889, George Lycurgus followed his brother from Greece and came to Hawaii. He eventually became the well-known owner of the Volcano House on the Big Island.

His wife, Georgina, sent for her 15-year-old brother, George Geracimos, who became the father of my late wife, Helen Geracimos Chapin.

She was a Punahou student, editor of Ka Leo at the University of Hawaii, and campus friend of Jean King and Patsy Mink. Helen went on to get her doctorate at Ohio State University and became a vice president at Hawaii Pacific University.

The next two generations bring us to 2018 and include a foster mother who kept at least five children on the right path, a vice president of the Bank of Hawaii, owners of two leading accounting firms, a Hawaiian activist, and the CEO of a health maintenance organization.

We are all better off for this chain migration. And this is only one chain of many in our state and our country.

Hank Chapin

Manoa

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Don’t let insurers decide health care

When I became a registered nurse in 1975, health insurers didn’t interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. That relationship was considered sacred.

Today, we can see the results of change. Insurance administrators make six-figure salaries while we watch insurance rates increase and actual care decrease. And then there are non-physician personnel determining whether a treatment is covered.

The medical community as well as private citizens must stand together and demand the sacred doctor-patient relationship be restored. Since health insurance does not guarantee appropriate health care, single- payer health care is the logical solution. The billions of dollars wasted on insurance administration would be drastically reduced.

The time is right, so let’s work together and make it happen.

Mary Hackney

Kalama Valley

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Hyperbaric helped diabetic patient

A grand hurrah for Nina Wu’s article, “UH Hyperbaric Treatment Center reopens at Kuakini” (Star-Advertiser, Jan. 27).

I was a beneficiary of the center’s treatment in 2012. I was diagnosed with the diabetic infection of the right foot. The treatment of choice was amputation of the foot at the knee.

Dr. Michael Shim of Queen’s Wound Center tried a hyperbaric treatment instead. I was treated with more than 50 sessions of hyperbaric, after which my infection subsided and I was able to walk on two legs.

Many thanks to Frank Farm Jr., who helped found the center, and its affable staff of doctors and technicians.

Robert Look, D.D.S.

Kaimuki

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Hawaii has racism in different forms

I read the article in Sunday’s paper about racial divide and I felt obligated to give all the haole in Hawaii some support (“Racist divide in the workplace,” Star-Advertiser, Jan. 28).

I’ve lived in Hawaii since 1958. My parents flew to Hawaii on a propeller plane from St. Louis when I was 2. I have been called “stupid haole” more times than I can count, but never in all these years have I felt such racial discrimination as I do today.

Just last weekend, while swimming with several of my friends, we were verbally assaulted by a local man a third my age. He yelled, “You f’in haoles go back to the mainland,” among other unprintable things.

I first noticed this change years ago when I called my dear childhood friend, who is Hawaiian, to say hello. She began a verbal tirade about the f’n haole taking our land, etc. I was crushed.

I feel the racist divide everywhere I go in Hawaii now, and it’s disheartening, because racism in any form should not be encouraged or tolerated.

Let’s keep the aloha spirit alive for all.

Candas Lee Rego

Kailua

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Hawaiian language deserves respect

I have a rewarding job helping people access public, medical and legal services. I am a language services coordinator for a nonprofit organization.

Occasionally, I receive requests for Hawaiian interpreters, so on hearing of Judge Blaine Kobayashi’s bench warrant for Kaleikoa Ka‘eo, I was astounded (“Maui judge issues arrest warrant over refusal to speak English,” Star-Advertiser, Top News, Jan. 24). Kobayashi didn’t just ignore Ka‘eo standing in his courtroom, but determined that English was the language he was best fit to defend himself in.

Not to mention:

>> Hawaiian is an official language of the state;

>> Language is culture and constitutes one’s identity;

>> This is the state of “Hawaii.”

I think more Hawaiian speakers should follow Ka‘eo’s example. The state also needs to make up for discrimination against Hawaiian speakers and proactively work to ensure ‘Olelo Hawai‘i is a living language. Lastly, there is a community need for Hawaiian language and I hope bilingual Hawaiian speakers will step up and register as interpreters.

Mishka Sulva

Palolo